HE answers prayers!!

It is hard for me to truly express how utterly thankful and excited I have been the past few days. I know that many of you know the outcome of our tryout in Alabama this past weekend, but in case you didn’t hear the news, Carl has a job now! You know the old saying, “Good things come to those who wait”? Well we have waited four months and finally – FINALLY we have somewhere to go! I would go on, I would love to tell you all the details and the ins and outs, but right now, I just don’t have words!

God is SO good, He’s SO good to me!

Thank you to all of you who have been keeping us in your prayers. Please continue to do so as we prepare to move (early January we are thinking) and start our new work in Alabama.

The future is BRIGHT! I can’t wait!

oh, hi!

I'm sorry for lack of update - we don't have the internet where we are staying and have to go to the library to get online for now. It's limited in time, so I sometimes forget about updating here.

The move went as well as it could I guess. We're staying with one of the older ladies at the congregation until we can get our own place. No cable TV, no internet, and no shower (yes, just a bathtub... definitely not fun hoisting my ginormous body out of), but we're dealing. We get to look at goats.... and yes, it is as fun as it sounds. :) But the good news is, we have a house lined up to move into hopefully the first weekend of December! We're being patient and optimistic.

Benjamin continues to grow and kick and punch. He's gotten into scraping across my belly with something sharp, and sometimes sticking a sharp elbow or knee straight up so you can see it poking up a half an inch! haha. it's... somewhat painful actually. But only 7 weeks left! Can you believe it? We had our first doc's appointment this past Monday and I really like the place. and the people. My next one is Dec. 1st, and we'll have an ultrasound to check on my placenta. Don't know if we'll get pictures or not. We'll see!

Anyway, that's all I have for now. Hope everyone is staying warm. :)

Love,
Kristen

rambling on...

Stomach, back, and ribs are currently aching. I'm thinking this is a welcome gift from the third trimester. Benjamin's not giving me a lot of room to expand my lungs... well, at least he's not hanging out with them under my ribcage (hopefully he will never get up that high!). So far, he's been hanging out pretty low and when he does stretch out, it's usually from side to side. And yeah, he hits that one spot that he has found a liking to kick, which hurts like crazy! I say he must take after his daddy because he seems to like to get me there a whole lot. And I'll go "oowwww Ben!!" and he'll just kick again. Carl suggested that perhaps he likes my reaction. Maybe if I made a silent "ow", he'd lay off? Who knows...

I hate to seem like the only thing I can do is complain. Really, it's not that bad. After long days, it can be a bit tiring, but all-in-all, I know that the end result will surpass all of this by miles and miles. 12 weeks doesn't seem like it's too far off... can you believe that, if Benjamin doesn't come early and doesn't come late, we will have a brand new baby boy so soon??! Carl has predicted that he will come early. I think he'll come more around the due date. Or maybe I'm just hoping so.

I need to go on a walk. The doctor said it was very good for me to go walking in the evening, and we haven't had the chance to go lately because we've been so busy. Hopefully this evening we'll get out and hit the pavement. Hopefully by then it won't hurt to move so much.

The apartment search... it's actually not so bad. We're waiting to get in touch with the folks down at Fort Valley to see if we can't get an advance in pay (and if I'm repeating myself from previous posts, I apologize... my memory really isn't what it used to be, and it never was exceptional to begin with). If we can get an advance, then there's a pretty good chance that we'll be able to be in our own apartment to begin with! I am so excited about the prospect, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up because I know things happen and sometimes they don't work out the way we prefer. Gotta just go with the flow, and that's what I plan to do.

I'm getting hot just sitting here (the sun is beating down on me and dinner is cooking), and I'm starting to drool from the smell of dinner... mmmm can't wait... good thing about pregnancy: you can be a pig and nobody cares to stop you, or has the guts to do it anyway! Haha! The other night at a youth devo I made Carl go get me a piece of cake because I didn't want to seem like a fat pig going in for a second piece. In the words of Popeye the Sailor: "I yam what I yam!"

Love,
Kristen

a weekend of unexpectancy

So I guess things don't always go how you plan... the family we thought we would be staying with until we save up enough for deposit and rent and all that good stuff... well, the husband offered it up without telling his wife. So we are no longer staying with them. That puts a bit of a damper on things. I guess if we can't find anything else, we will have to stay with the lady with the cats (which stay outside - but we weren't wanting to risk anything, ya know?).

I'm not getting stressed. Or, I'm not going to allow myself to get stressed. It wouldn't be good for me or for Benjamin, so I'm just going to take it easy. Today I figure I'd start packing up the stuff we brought over here to mom and dad's. I still haven't started doing that actually, but I plan to, probably after I eat.

It's finally cooling down here. I love the colder weather. It's perfect pregnancy weather, if you ask me!

By the way - I'm not good at keeping up with Trimester stuff, or months. I've been going week by week. But, apparently I'm in my Third Trimester. Ummm. Weird! Did not know this!

But anyway, that means three months to go! WOW! And with everything going on - I know this is going to go by so fast.

Oh, that reminds me... http://andbenmakes3.shutterfly.com/ That's the new site for Benjamin. It'll have all the pictures from here on out, plus journals, all dedicated to Benjamin. I'm going to try to show everyone pictures of Benjamin once he's born, but to be honest the best place to look for all that would probably be that site I just linked, or facebook.

Anyway you can become a member of the site and make comments or get updates and everything. Go for it! It's free and all that.

Kay, I'm running out of things to say! I'll update you later if anything comes up.

Kristen

so it goes...

(27 Weeks.)

I'm feeling more and more exhausted... perhaps it's just been a busy week. But, I have a feeling this is only the beginning, because November is right around the corner. There's a lot to do between now and then, and I haven't even begun... but today, and tomorrow, we should have a few more things checked out and finalized in Fort Valley. We should be leaving later today and going to stay in a hotel again. I like the weekend trips with Carl; it's nice to have some time with him that isn't interrupted by other family members. Not that I don't enjoy being around family...

I can't wait until we find our own place to rent. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can afford a place and get in there. Hopefully sometime before mid December, preferably before then. But we'll see. I'm just really tired of relying on other people. I mean, I really do appreciate my parents being willing to let us stay as long as we needed. But sometimes I feel like the welcome is running out. Or maybe I'm just getting frustrated. Anyway, as we can't afford to move in anywhere in Fort Valley as of yet, we are going to have to live with another couple. More relying on others. But I have to hand it to them - it's a real Christian thing to do. To offer your home to people who don't exactly know what's coming up in their future.

Time is running low, anyway! January isn't too far off and Benjamin will soon be here with us - I can't wait.

Anyway, I need to eat some lunch and get stuff ready to go down to Fort Valley. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

an over-due update!

I'm so neglectful. I'm so sorry! But I have good reasons, or so I think anyway! Just bear with me!

Ohkay so you know that job I was talking about? Well, we finally got a contract! It didn't have everything we needed, so Carl submitted some of his input and hopefully by this weekend they will have everything sorted out so we can put pen to paper and get this show on the road! This weekend we are traveling down to Fort Valley, and maybe we'll have time to look around at houses or apartments to rent. They want us to start November 1st, so! Things really are moving along!

Last Thursday was my last Doctor's appointment. Dr. Lowe said that everything looked good, my blood pressure is up (THANKFULLY!), and he could tell I have been getting enough water. Good thing, too, seeing as I should be considered a fish from all the water I consume. Anyway, we go back next Thursday for the gestational diabetes test. There was a girl in the office last time we were there who was having hers done, and she seemed to enjoy the orange glucose drink. That's good! I was afraid it'd taste like... Motrin or whatever that orange medicine my mom always gave me is called.

Benjamin has found a favorite place on my side where he likes to kick. And yeah, it hurts. It also makes it hard for me to breathe sometimes if I'm sitting. So the other night I tried to push him over in hopes that he would move away, and he must take after his daddy, because he just kicked my hand like, "Um, I'm here, and I ain't moving!" He's getting so big, and remains VERY active, especially at the end of the day when Carl reads to him. He gets really excited, I guess?

Here are a few recent photos:

Our little family! :)

26 weeks!

26 weeks, 5 days

my handsome husband, who is so proud of his facial hair, haha!

Can't take him anywhere and have him behave! ;)

And that's all for now. I still haven't gotten totally used to uploading these pictures. If I find anything else to share, I'll upload it tomorrow! Oh, we get a bunch of stuff from Julie for Benjamin tomorrow, that's being stored at Truth for the World! I am so excited!

Time for me to start getting ready for the gospel meeting tonight!

Hope everyone's having a great week! Love you all!

- Kristen

edit// CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!? Less than 100 days till Benjamin is supposed to get here! 91 days! WOW! I knew it was 3 months, but.... I mean... WOW!

The Power of Prayer

There are a lot of things that I have learned over the past year or so... especially while living in Memphis. I can't begin to explain how many changes I went through in such a little time. I graduated in May, got married in August, and moved away to Memphis. Just like that. And, I guess like probably everyone who's ever experienced combining your life with someone else's, 'til death, it comes with it's own set of worries and stresses... and there comes a time when you finally realize that no, you're not going to be able to do it by yourself. You are completely helpless alone, because you do not control your own life. Don't even try to. You can't do it. Life is too big a task for you to think you can handle it all on your own.

I learned very quickly that I couldn't get by if I didn't place all my trust in God. I am a firm believer in the power of prayer. Sometimes it takes the possibility of having just escaped certain death, or at least injuries of you, and the one person you love above all others on the earth, to convince you.

For me, it was when Carl and I were driving to Arkansas one Sunday morning and we hydroplaned across the median. I had been asleep, and woke to find grass flying everywhere and Carl's arm across me. We didn't flip. We landed facing the opposite direction on the shoulder of the other lane. And maybe 15 seconds later, a semi drove past us.

Before we had gotten on the road, in the McDonald's parking lot, we prayed for safe travel as we always did on Sunday mornings. And I called my mom once I had calmed down, and it turned out they had also almost encountered an accident, a head-on colision, and that mom had prayed for us as well. Yes, God answers prayers.

And He's answered another one. Carl landed the job in Fort Valley! It's what we'd both been praying for. And deep down I knew that we would get the job. I was so confident we would. Because we needed one so desperately, with this baby on the way. God continues to care for us, and for that, I am SO thankful!


So really, I said all of that to announce that we finally got a job, and we're very excited about it! We don't know when we start, but we understand that things like that-- all the technical stuff-- takes time. So until then, I'm going to enjoy the rest of the time I have with my family, and start looking into OB/GYNs in the Fort Valley area... and start thinking about maternity insurance, because I don't think Medicaid will cover me after this... but, again, God will provide for us and take care of us, I have no doubt!

A quick, very shameless plug, and I'll be done: http://www.babyhomepages.net/carlandkristensfamily/index.php.

Love,
Kristen